Purpose: Spoken discourse analysis is commonly employed in the assessment and treatment of people living with aphasia, yet there is no standardization in assessment, analysis, or reporting procedures, thereby precluding comparison/meta-analyses of data and hindering replication of findings. An important first step is to identify current practices…

Psychiatric disorders in individuals with co-occurring autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID) are common, but diagnosis presents many challenges. The Psychopathology in Autism checklist (PAC) is among the very few instruments specifically developed for this group of individuals. The psychometric properties of the PAC…

Purpose: Rapid maximum performance repetition tasks have increasingly demonstrated their utility as clinimetric markers supporting diagnosis and monitoring of bulbar disease in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). A recently developed protocol uses novel real-word repetitions instead of traditional nonword/syllable sequences in hopes of improving…

Little is known about the alliance between therapists and children with autism spectrum disorder who are receiving psychological therapies in outpatient treatment settings. This study examined the therapeutic alliance in children with autism spectrum disorder and clinical anxiety, who were receiving cognitive behavioral therapy in a randomized,…

Purpose: Our purpose was to explore the validity and reliability of the German Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS-G; Thomas-Stonell, Oddson, Robertson, & Rosenbaum, 2010, 2012), which is an authorized adaptation of the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (Thomas-Stonell et al., 2010) tool, which measures…

This study assessed the diagnostic utility of the Pervasive Developmental Disorder Behavior Inventory (PDDBI) in a sample of 84 children aged 3-12 years of age. Forty-two children with ASD were individually matched on age and non-verbal IQ to 42 children with other disabilities and groups were compared on PDDBI subscales and total score. Results…

Analyses of convergent validity and group assignment using self-report, caregiver-report and interview-based measures of adolescent psychopathy were conducted in a sample of 160 incarcerated adolescents. Results reveal significant convergent validity between caregiver-report measures of adolescent psychopathy, significant convergent validity…

Objective: Frontline health professionals need a "red flag" tool to aid their decision making about whether to make a referral for a full diagnostic assessment for an autism spectrum condition (ASC) in children and adults. The aim was to identify 10 items on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) (Adult, Adolescent, and Child versions) and on…

There is a paucity of diagnostic instruments for adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study evaluates the psychometric properties of the Swedish version of the Ritvo Autism and Asperger Diagnostic Scale-Revised (RAADS-R), an 80-item self-rating scale designed to assist clinicians diagnosing ASD in adults. It was administered to 75…

The goal of this review was to examine the state of Level 2, caregiver-completed rating scales for the screening of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) in individuals above the age of three years. We focused on screening accuracy and paid particular attention to comparison groups. Inclusion criteria required that scales be developed post ICD-10, be…

Asperger's syndrome (AS), first diagnosed in 1944, and has only recently begun to receive a great deal of research attention. An emerging controversy has been whether AS is a distinct condition from high functioning autism (HFA), and if so, can it be reliably and validly diagnosed. While measures designed specifically to aid in the screening and…

Diagnosing autism and PDD-NOS at very early ages has become a major priority in the field of mental health. More recently, researchers have also come to realize the importance of identifying co-occurring conditions of psychopathology in this population. In the present study, 309 children between 17 and 37 months of age who had been identified as…

Background: A number of disorders are associated with pragmatic difficulties. Instruments that can make subdivisions within the larger construct of pragmatics could be important tools for disentangling profiles of pragmatic difficulty in different disorders. The deficits underlying the observed pragmatic difficulties may be different for different…

Three short forms of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), developed in 1991, were cross-validated on 207 male and 133 female adolescent psychiatric inpatients and outpatients. Results show psychometric properties for the short forms that are comparable to those of the WAIS-R standardization sample. (SLD)

The psychometric characteristics of 12 adults with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) and a group without PWS but with other similar traits were compared. Results found cognitive, behavioral and educational traits often associated with PWS to be present in both groups, illustrating the importance of control/comparison groups in research establishing…